Snow White and Rose Red

14

Technically, it was not a Q and A.

There were no questions.

Only answers.

I would have been enormously disappointed in Bloom if he had begun asking questions of Sarah just then.

They had taken her to the police station because she had to be charged with two counts of aggravated assault, a second-degree felony punishable by a term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years. But now they were merely holding her for the medical men, and the medical men weren’t yet there when I arrived at the Public Safety Building.

The medical men, thank God, were at Good Samaritan when the ambulance arrived carrying Joanna and me. Bloom had found us at the bird sanctuary and had immediately radioed for a meat wagon. He told me that the moment he walked into that empty house on Stone Crab and saw blood on the carpet, he knew damn well where I’d headed. He found me sitting on the ground there with Joanna in my arms, sobbing. He handcuffed Sarah’s hands behind her back, and then went into the car to radio for the ambulance.

The emergency-room doctors at Good Samaritan told me that Joanna would be all right. Apparently she had not been hit with as much force as had Christine Seifert, who was still lying in a coma in the intensive-care unit. Moreover, perhaps because Joanna was shorter than Sarah, the blow had struck her on top of her head, where the skull was more protective than it was at the temple. She would have a hell of a headache in the morning, the doctors told me, but she’d be fine. Or at least as fine as anyone could be after getting hit on the head with a three-inch heel.

Sarah was in a holding cell at the Public Safety Building.

She did not know where she was.

She thought she was at Southern Medical, being observed by a team of doctors there.

She did not recognize me.

She thought I was one of the examining physicians.

She seemed to have no memory of what she’d done and tried to do that afternoon and this evening.

At one point, when Rawles came downstairs with several containers of coffee, she insisted that the Black Knight be removed from the premises.

No questions, then.

Only answers.

All of them supplied by Sarah in a scattered monologue that shifted person and tense at will: Sarah talking to the physicians at Southern Medical, pleading her case; Sarah talking to herself; Sarah talking to God knew what demons raged in her mind.

It was the saddest recitation I’d ever heard in my life.

...and of course he didn’t know I was listening on the telephone, how could he know? There was no one in the house when I got home that day, he must have figured it was safe to call his little bimbo. An accident, pure and simple, my finding out about him, my hearing what she said to him on the telephone, oh, the horror of it, my own father! I had put down my parcels — I love the word parcels, don’t you love that word, so British, so unlike the crude American packages, ugh, packages, enough to make one barf, my dear — put down my parcels, then, on the hall table, no one in the house, the house still and silent and golden-dazzled with dust motes, all so still, little did the maiden know what was in store that sunny August day, oh little does she know, the pure white virgin. Put down my parcels and remembered that I was supposed to take the Ferrari in for service, well too late then, of course, supposed to be in at nine that morning, and went into the library to call the people who run the foreign car place, though they’re not foreigners themselves, poor souls, and picked up the receiver and heard them speaking.

Heard voices.

My father and a woman.

Oh my oh my oh my, the things they were saying.

I stood aghast, as well I might have, such obscenities falling upon my maiden ears, oh the horror. Snow White blushes, actually feels the rush of blood red to her maiden cheeks, the same blush of course as when he unzippered his pants to reveal himself to me, but that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead. I never did like horseback riding, that was his idea, of course, Daddy’s, dear Daddy with his marvelous ideas, like putting me on a horse and hiring the Black Knight to teach me, oh, he taught me all right, gonna teach you, li’l darlin’.

I stood there aghast and abashed and astonished and all things maidenly as mentioned before, have I mentioned earlier the shame I felt while listening to those hot August words? If not, you must consider it a mere oversight, doctors, learned physicians, because as you can readily discern I am some-what confused as to why I was incarcerated in the Tomb of the Innocent in the first place, when all I did — well, what I did... well, why was I there? I was as innocent as the driven snow. I got on my knees only because he forced me to. Take it, darlin’, he said, patting me on the head, I before him on my knees, black boots polished to a high black sheen, oh the horror, that woman saying such things on the telephone, those voices on the telephone.

Well, you know, my father said, it’s not that I’m a jealous man, and she says, Oho he’s not a jealous man, or words to that effect, mocking him. A young voice. He calls her Tracy, he calls the Harlot Witch Tracy, but he doesn’t mention her last name, it is Tracy this and Tracy that, oh the trouble that gave me later on, the trouble finding her after he was dead, after she gave him the heart attack, all those things she said to him on the phone.

Snow White gathers, in her role as Inadvertent Eavesdropper, that Daddy Dear is upset because Little Bimbo Tracy has taken a trip to Los Angeles to visit an old friend without advising Poor Rich Daddy of her departure. She is back now, Little Tracy Bimbo, and she is telling Daddy he is a jealous old man who doesn’t even trust her to go to the bathroom by herself. Oh such intimacies. Toilet talk on the telephone while Snow White blushes and creams in her unmentionables.

Have I mentioned my unmentionables?

I was wearing white that day, Snow White was, a white dress and white sandals and white lace-trimmed bikini panties, inadvertently and surprisingly damp as I listened to this illicit conversation, these hoarse intimate voices, the horse pawing the ground behind him, deeper, darlin’.

He protested all over the place, of course. He was upstairs in the bedroom he shared with my mother, talking to this horrible little slut, and he protested vigorously, oh yes, vigorously I might add, that he was not a jealous person by nature but that common decency dictated an obligation on her part to keep him informed of her whereabouts when after all he was paying for the fucking apartment she was in — this word on my father’s lips! — and letting her use the company car, and permitting long-distance calls on the company telephone to God knew where in the country and abroad, certainly to Los Angeles where she had gone without telling him. And what friend out there, may I ask, he asks, what friend did you go out there to visit, some old boyfriend of yours out there? This from the man protesting he is not jealous. My ears were burning. Snow White’s ears burned, they burn even now in recalling that shimmering August day, two weeks before he died. A heart attack. An attack of the heart. Small wonder, is it not? The passion in the voices on the phone that day. I almost had a heart attack myself.

And then she said — and this is what I will never forget — then she tried to console him, started buttering him up, buttering her bread and butter, her bread-and-butter man, Rich Daddy Whittaker with his tart in an apartment someplace, his heart in an apartment someplace, his heart-on in an apartment someplace, Oh Horace, she says, calls him Horace, she does, Oh Horace, how can you be so mean to me when I was pining for you all the while I was in LA and am dying to see you now? What I want you to do, what I want — oh the horror!

She said...

Oh, what she said to him.

Snow White listens, tingling with excitement.

Her father, her Horace, her Rich Daddy Whittaker says he’ll try.

Be here, she commands, the Harlot Witch.

I’ll try, he says again, and there is an abrupt click on the line, he has hung up the phone in the upstairs bedroom. I stood, Snow White stands, I stood trembling in the library, unable to move, the telephone receiver fastened irrevocably to my hand, an extension of my hand, the telephone and my hand are one, my hand has become white plastic. I try to shake the receiver free, it is alive, the receiver, it refuses to seat itself firmly on the cradle, it rattles to the desktop, it is alive with voices! There are footsteps on the steps leading downstairs, is he hearkening to her summons? I confront him in the downstairs hallway, I face him there, Snow White and her father... Does Snow White even have a father? Forgive me, doctors, I... I...

Once upon a time there was a destitute widow who lived in a ramshackle house with her two children named Snow White and Rose Red for the flowers that bloomed on the rosebushes in the yard, the flowers that bloomed, the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la.

Exactly.

No father at the time, then, no widow either, but how can that be? If you’ll excuse me for just one moment, I’m sure I’ll work this out, it’s all clear in my mind, truly it is. She was not a widow then, no, of course not, the Harlot Witch was not then a widow, not at the time of that showdown in the OK Corral in the hallway where the dust motes climbed relentlessly and the carpeting on the stairs absorbed our words with a silent hush, hush little baby, don’t you cry.

I told him I had heard.

He blinked in astonishment, this father who was not a father, no destitute widow either, not yet, no destitution, merely prostitution in an apartment somewhere, saying things to him on the telephone — I told him what I had heard. I repeated to him the foul obscenities she had whispered on the phone. We had no rosebushes in our garden. A pity. So rich and no roses. So poor.

Oh, I laid it out to him, laid it out, laid it. I told him he must never see her again. I told him I would be watching him. I told him I would track him day and night, follow him wherever he went, I demanded that he end this relationship with this Tracy Witch Harlot Witch, end it at once.

You are mistaken, Snow White, he says, though he does not call me Snow White, he does not know I am Snow White, her own father doesn’t know his darling daughter. But in his stammering, the truth is in his eyes, dead eyes, cold dead lying eyes, he loves me not. Oh, not dead yet, I certainly know the difference between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, how could he be dead when I was speaking to him, pleading with him, begging him not to continue this terrible thing, threatening him, yes — no, not yet.

I did not threaten him then.

This was still the middle of August, so terribly hot down here in August, don’t you know, heat on that landing with the carpeted steps behind him and outside the tinkling of the small pool in the Spanish courtyard, do you have to tinkle, Sarah, well certainly not, I’ve already wet my pants, Snow White’s pants are soaking wet as she discusses all this with her father.

The threat — but I am innocent of his death, he is not dead, bless me, Father, for I have sinned — the threat was not until September. Labor Day. September third. Why do they call it Labor Day? Is it a holiday in honor of countless women suffering on innumerable maternity wards? As my mother must have suffered, the Harlot Witch delivering her Snow White into the world, Dear Daddy later delivering his Snow White into the hands of the Black Knight, Black Knights both, black as night, mmm, that’s the way. Was it supposed to be white? From a black man? Do you know I was totally surprised that it was white? Well, of course, an innocent, only twelve years old. It should have been black, shouldn’t it? Swallow it, darlin’, he said, but I would not.

I am wearing a white bikini bathing suit.

I am basking in the sunshine beside the pool, the waters of the bay lapping the pilings, lapping my, oh, what she said to him on the telephone!

Those voices! Snow White lies in the dazzling sunlight, dazzling in her brief white bikini. It is Labor Day, but there is no labor at the Whittaker mansion, there is only lassitude and lust, I did not mean to say that. He, my father, the Black Knight with his thick black hair and brief black swimming trunks, swallow it, darlin’, lies beside me in a lounge chair. Mother, the Harlot Witch in embryo, has gone into the house for lemonade for this is Labor Day and the help is away, God help them. I tell him, I am testing him, you see, because I really have no way of knowing this, I tell him that I know he is still seeing the Bimbo Witch, and he looks at me with his dead, cold, lying eyes, and he says No, Sarah — my name an abomination on his lying lips, expecting me to swallow his blatant lies — he says No, I have stopped seeing her, and I tell him this is a lie, I know it is a lie, still testing him, and I tell him I will reveal all to Mother the moment she comes out to the pool again. This is my threat — but it is not my fault, what happened was not my fault.

She is coming through the French doors out onto the patio.

She is carrying a silver tray and on it a pitcher of lemonade, the sunlight splinters on the pitcher, yellow on yellow, and I call to her, I say Mother, there is something you should know — a knife to his heart! He clutches for his heart, he looks at me, his eyes opening wide, bless me, Father, for I have sinned, and he whispers No, Sarah, his last words, my name on his lips the final word he utters, for he is dead in the next instant. Well, of course he isn’t dead, he arranged for me to be brought here before you learned gentlemen, did he not, arranged for my rescue from the Tomb of the Innocent where they placed me against my will, it is she who killed him, the words she said on the telephone, those voices on the telephone. It is she who killed my father, it is she, the witch, the Harlot Witch Tracy!

I wonder how I can find her.

There is a will, the Prime Minister of Justification reads the will to me.

I am wondering how I can find Tracy.

I keep hearing those voices on the telephone.

Her name echoes in my mind day and night.

Tracy.

Who killed him.

By saying what she said on the telephone.

And, of course, he left her a fortune, never mind what the will said, where there’s a will there’s a way, and after all I heard those intimacies on the phone, I heard those voices, I can still hear those voices, so he had to have left her a sizable amount, wouldn’t you say? I mean, that’s only reasonable, is it not? So I had to find her, you see, Snow White must find a way to find her, this is what occupies Snow White’s thoughts day and night, finding Tracy, accusing her, trying her, condemning her to the hell from which she migrated breathing brimstone and obscenities, are they allowed to say such things on the telephone?

It occurred to me — I know you believe I am mentally incompetent, but surely my reasoning back then in September was rational and cool and certainly intelligent — it occurred to me, kind sirs, dear physicians, that there had to be papers, documents, records, something! In his desk, in the library, something! A clue to her identity and her whereabouts, for certainly she should not be allowed to run free in a society that frowns, to say the least, on telephone callers who kill a person, I mean kill for Christ’s sake, by making lewd, obscene, and pornographic suggestions to a man his age, so strong for his age, so handsome, oh my Black Knight, you lying, cheating, loveless bastard!

And there, in a drawer, secret and secure, in a drawer in a desk in the library, French doors open to the pool in the Spanish courtyard, goldfish splashing gold in golden sunlight, green awnings shading shady doings as Secret Snow White rapes and pillages her father’s desk, her destitute widow mother out to a meeting of the garden club, no roses in the garden, such a pity. And finds it. Finds the clue. Shades of Sam Spade shadily scratching black paint from a Maltese Falcon, Black Knight unmasked, plaster feet of clay, plastic goldfish in the pool, all plaster and plastic and fake, no gold save the gold in the clue, the clue! You are doomed, Tracy, for here is your name and your address, Snow White has uncovered your name and your address in the secret, shaded debris of the Black Knight’s desk.

Tracy.

Well, no, not quite.

On the note, a memo to himself perhaps, he has written the familiar diminutive “Trace.” In his own hand. In the Black Knight’s hand. In the Black Knight’s hand he holds a black, well, never mind. And beneath that, beneath the “Trace,” how adorable but until now untraceable, scrawled in pencil are the words “Seascape ready July 5.”

The twenty-seventh day of September in the year of Our Lord, bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

The gun is my father’s own.

The knife comes later.

Oh, must I repeat all this? I have said all this a hundred times before, in other forms, to be sure, the lady speaks in tongues. Tongue it, baby, give me your tongue. Why am I here? When will he come to get me out of here? When will he come? I grow weary of repetition. I grows weary and sick o’ tryin’. Try takin’ more of it, darlin’.

Snow White knows what Seascape is, she reads the papers, Snow White does, it is a condominium on Whisper Key, she is no fool, Snow White.

I took the gun from where he kept it in the bottom drawer of his desk, big black gun.

There was no listing in the lobby directory for anyone named Tracy. Not a Tracy anything. The gun was in my shoulder bag. I was wearing a yellow dress, the gun was heavy in the shoulder bag, tote that barge, lift that bale. Where is she? Have I made a terrible mistake? In the office of the managing director there is a black girl. Snow White addresses her shyly. I am looking for a girl named Tracy, Snow White says. Gorgeous black girl, does she do with black men what Snow White once was forced to do on her knees before the Black Knight, stallion passionately pawing the earth as she engorges him? But did not swallow, remember. Swallows her fear now, lest the black girl realize there is a big black gun in the shoulder bag. But, ah no, she scarcely looks up from her deskwork. Tracy Kilbourne, she says, apartment one-oh-six. And seals her death warrant.

I ring, Snow White rings, we ring the doorbell. Chimes inside. She is wearing a red wrapper, the Harlot Witch, sashed at the waist. She is barefoot, Rose Red in her bright red wrapper, and her hair is wet, she is fresh from her toilette, my father’s whore, his Rose Red whore in her scarlet dress and golden tresses, hair like mine, blonde like mine, he has chosen well, the Black Knight. I show her the gun. She does not scream, the slut. Perhaps she has seen guns before, you know these types, they hang about with all sorts of desperate people. I tell her my car is parked downstairs, and I want her to come with me. Before we leave the apartment, I take a knife from the rack in the kitchen. I know exactly what I plan to do with the knife. I also know where I am going to take her. Because the bird sanctuary, don’t you agree, is an appropriate place for the plucking of this chicken, the slaughtering of this bird, my father’s little bird, the bird sanctuary is ideal, for it is there that they attack blondes in attics, the birds do, I am terrified of birds, I will never forgive him, that horrible Alfred Hitchcock, hitching up his pants afterward, thank you, darlin’, that was nice.

She is docile, the brazen bitch.

I have the gun, she knows I will use it.

She tries to talk to me, reason with me.

She is driving, I am allowing her to drive to her own execution, the gun in my lap pointed at her, the knife in my shoulder bag.

Where are we going? she asks.

I give her directions.

The voices are echoing in my head.

We passed through the gate that day and paid the entrance fee, and she didn’t try to say anything to the man collecting it because she knew I would shoot her on the spot, I had warned her about that, and I suppose she still felt there was a chance that she might talk me out of this, though she didn’t know who I was, didn’t know I was here to avenge my father’s death, caused by what she had said to him on the phone. Those voices. The park was crowded that afternoon, this was, oh who can remember minor details, time, place, circumstance, who gives a damn, and does it really matter to you gentlemen? Sometime in the afternoon. Early afternoon? Late afternoon? But in any event too crowded, had I made a mistake taking her there? We all make mistakes, Lord knows, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. And yet, in such a vastness, there had to be a place, didn’t there? A place to do it?

There were people on bicycles.

There were people canoeing.

There were people boarding an excursion boat.

I told her to keep driving.

Drive, she said.

Snow White said drive.

And Rose Red drove.

And soon — because there is a God, you know, and he answers the prayers of maidens on virtuous missions — there was a road. A ranger station, and beside it a dirt road, follow the yellow brick road. And no people. The park empty here, we had come, oh who cares, fifteen, twenty miles past the entrance gate now, I could hear birds, I was frightened. But I knew what had to be done. I had heard the voices. I told her to turn the car onto the road. She obeyed me.

We got out of the car at the river’s edge.

The river was running deep after all the rain that month.

She said Listen...

Voices.

I tilted the gun up.

Heavy black gun.

She said Wait a minute...

Voices.

My finger was on the trigger.

She said Who are you?

Snow White, I said, and shot her in the throat.

I cut out her tongue before I threw her in the river.

So much blood.

Cut out her tongue because of what she’d said to my father on the telephone.

I want you to come here, and get down on your hands and knees, and lick my pussy till I come all over your face.

There remained only Mrs. Whittaker.

I went to the mansion on Belvedere Road at ten o’clock on Thursday morning, the second day of May.

The housekeeper, Patricia, showed me out to where Mrs. Whittaker was sitting by the pool.

Mrs. Whittaker knew what had happened the day before. She was the guardian of Sarah’s person and property, and she had been informed. She knew that her daughter had been charged with aggravated assault and that a judge had ordered her immediate examination to determine her competency to stand trial.

“There are a few questions I’d like to ask you,” I said.

“Yes, certainly,” Mrs. Whittaker said. She was staring out over the bay. She knew what was coming, I was certain of that.

“On September twenty-seventh last year,” I said, “you came back to this house sometime in the afternoon, along about four in the afternoon, I believe you told me—”

“Yes,” Mrs. Whittaker said.

She seemed very weary all at once.

I kept watching her.

She did not take her eyes from the waters of the bay.

“And found that your daughter had attempted suicide.”

“Yes.”

She would not look at me.

“Mrs. Whittaker, the police believe that your daughter returned to this house after... Mrs. Whittaker, they believe she killed a woman named—”

“No,” Mrs. Whittaker said.

“That’s my belief, too,” I said.

“No, you’re mistaken.”

She turned to me.

“you’re mistaken,” she said again.

“Mrs. Whittaker,” I said, “why did you have Sarah committed under the Baker Act?”

“You know why,” she said. “She was insane.”

“Did you know she’d killed Tracy Kilbourne?”

“I do not know anyone named Tracy Kilbourne.”

“Mrs. Whittaker, did you have her committed to protect her?”

“From herself, yes,” Mrs. Whittaker said.

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the law. I want to know if you had her committed—”

“No.”

“—to avoid prosecution.”

“No. She had attempted suicide. I wanted only to—”

“Mrs. Whittaker, if your daughter killed someone—”

“She killed no one.”

“—and if you knew this—”

“I knew she had attempted suicide.”

“—and if you subsequently—”

“I believe we’ve talked long enough,” Mrs. Whittaker said, and rose suddenly, and started for the house. I stepped into her path.

“What I’m trying to say—”

“I know very well what you’re trying to say. Please get out of my way, young man.”

“I’m trying to—”

“Damn you!” she said. “Must you do this to me? Haven’t I had enough?”

I stood watching her.

She took a deep breath.

It seemed for a moment that she would say nothing more.

And then, very softly, she said, “Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that you come home one afternoon to find your daughter wearing a dress drenched in blood. ‘So much blood,’ she says, over and over again. Let us further assume that your daughter has an unfamiliar knife in her hands, and she is trying to slash her wrists with it, to punish herself — as she tells you — for having killed the Harlot Witch and cut out her tongue. No razor blade, Mr. Hope, only a telltale bloodstained knife. The front seat of her automobile is covered with blood. There is a pistol in that car, and it smells as if it has recently been fired.”

She hesitated.

“Would you call the police, Mr. Hope? Would you allow your treasured daughter to be most certainly adjudged criminally insane? Would you condemn her to a lifetime of imprisonment in a state hospital with true criminals? Or would you dispose of the knife, dispose of the gun and the car, dispose of the bloodstained dress, have your daughter put away where she can no longer harm anyone, in the hope that one day—”

“If she killed someone—”

“Ah, but that is mere supposition,” Mrs. Whittaker said. “you’re a lawyer, so presumably you’re familiar with Section 777.03 of the Florida Statutes.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

“It’s titled ‘Accessory after the Fact,’ Mr. Hope.”

“Which is exactly what—”

“Yes, I quite understand why you’re here. But you see, I know that particular section virtually by heart. I’ll take another moment to recite it to you, and then I would appreciate it if you left.”

She looked me directly in the eye now, as if defying me to contradict what she was about to say.

“The section defines an accessory after the fact — and please forgive me if I paraphrase — as someone who, knowing that a crime has been committed, gives the offender assistance or aid with intent that he shall avoid or escape detection, arrest, trial, or punishment However, the section exempts anyone who stands, and I quote, ‘in the relation of husband or wife, parent or grandparent, child or grandchild, brother or sister.’ ”

She kept looking at me.

“If there is any truth in all that I said earlier, if in fact Sarah was drenched in blood that day, if in fact she had killed someone—”

“Isn’t that what happened?” I said.

“If that is what happened, then she committed a felony,” Mrs. Whittaker said. “The gravest felony, murder. But even if I knew she’d done such a terrible thing... and if in fact I helped her to avoid or escape detection, arrest, trial, or punishment... of what possible concern can that be to you? I am her mother. And the section holds that an accessory after the fact is someone who does not stand in the relation of parent. I am Sarah’s parent, her only living parent, her mother. The section does not apply to me.”

“It applies to Mark Ritter,” I said. “And to Dr. Helsinger. And to—”

“All of whom knew nothing of what had happened. My daughter tried to commit suicide. That is what they knew. The knife, the gun, the dress, all were at the bottom of the bay by the time they arrived. The car was locked away in the garage. I cleaned it and sold it the very next day.”

“And this is all supposition,” I said.

“Entirely. My daughter was manifestly insane. That is all any of them knew. I wanted her committed at once. They followed my instructions.”

“Mrs. Whittaker,” I said, “this goes beyond the statutes. This is—”

“Do you have any children, Mr. Hope?” she asked.

“I have a daughter, yes,” I said.

Our eyes met again.

“On September twenty-seventh last year,” Mrs. Whittaker said, “I, too, had a daughter. My poor, dear, troubled, marvelous Sarah. She is still my daughter. My daughter, Mr. Hope, can you understand that? My daughter.”

Her eyes were shining with tears.

She turned away.

“Good day, Mr. Hope,” she said, and went into the house.